Our Russian Blue male, Teddy, was neutered this past Tuesday, Dec. 11th. His surgery went well. He has been resting and eating since he came home. He has a new home waiting for him come January! Pics of him tomorrow!

Saturday, December 1, 2012

I thought perhaps I should just leave and not mention any reasons why. Then I realized people have left the CB and I sometimes wonder why- because no reason is given. It is sad when people leave so I thought I needed to do one last post to provide reasons as to why I am leaving the CB.

Well, I guess I started noticing the changes in the CB over the last year or two. It was not as much as fun. People did not visit blogs as much and some people just dropped out of sight with no word. After ML's illness and self-imposed sabaatical started, the CB really began to change. So few people sent any noos. And when they did, it was usually sad news about the death of a cat. While I realize many people genuinely grieve over their cats, it was beginning to be too much for me to visit the CB main page and have it read like the obituary page of a newspaper. Argh... way too sad!! If it was not the obituaries, there were at least one if not two auctions going at a time. Again, I realize the need for the auctions, but has anyone thought how it looks for there to be auctions on the CB home page. No? let me tell you how it looks to me. Like anyone with a cat can just send in a message for a need and voila -an auction is posted. Free Money if you go to the CB and send in a message saying you have a need! Is that how we want to be represented to the world? As the place where one can send a message and get an auction going?? I doubt it. Obits used to be rare events as did auctions. It was NEWS when someone was in genuine need. It was NEWS when a beloved 'cat blogger' died.

With the growth of the CB, there will now be no weeks without the news that a cat of a blogger has died somewhere in the CB world. I am not saying that the CB should not recognize that but does it really need to be on the home page? There are plenty of links to other pages. Why not make a link to "Rainbow Bridge" page for people to set up memorials or links to their posts about a beloved cat? If you want to know if a kitty has died, you can check that page.

Also, I believe the auctions should be moved to a page of their own so they are not on the home page. The home page should be news that happened that day. There is no need to keep an announcement up for more than a day unless it is about a party/happening that needs to be announced over several days in advance so people will know where and when. If you want to know if an auction is running, then you can check the auction page. In fact, I thought there was going to be an auction page but I gather I was misinformed.

I will say that the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back" is when both my husband and I sent news of Mia's kittens several times including a comment to the noos section of the CB page. We waited patiently for the news to appear. We contacted people with the news. We posted at our own blog about it. Yet, the news of Mia's kittens did not appear. When it finally did appear over a week later, it was below a rather nasty message from Mog:A note to those that email stuff to the noos, please include a link. I do not know all the kitties nor do I have time to hunt down all comments and links left in Mr Linky to find one. KC and ML will be back in January.

Now, If we had not given links as well as posted comments which always have a link to the person/blog that sent it, we could understand that comment. Alas, we did indeed give links to our blogs and my comment in the news section did indeed have a link to our blog. No need to do any thing more than click on the link above my comment. It is that easy!! Yet, during this time, news/obits continued to be posted on the CB home page making me wonder if it was just our news that was not being posted???? SO i would send another message announcing the good news of Mia's kittens.

If Mog does not have the time on a daily basis to post news to the CB homepage, perhaps that task could be given to someone else. If Mog does not want to do this (ie keep up the CB homepage) then please find someone else who will want to do this willingly.

For those bloggers who know us on FB, see ya round on FB! . Please note- all are welcome to visit our blogs. They are still up. My/Alexi's blog has changed focus to the cattery. G's blog remains his and he can do with it what he wants. I suspect it will remain but G does not post regularly as his typist is busy with work.